(Barge) Ekanat Boonlue

HEC Paris

“Work hard to achieve the professional goals but play harder to build long lasting relationships with friends.”

Hometown: Bangkok, Thailand

Fun Fact About Yourself: I believe that working is like going to school to learn from work and play with friends. So, I always invite my colleagues to do some activities (e.g. having a casual dinner, exercising, playing board games, etc.) after works even on a very long tiring working day.

Undergraduate School and Major: Chulalongkorn University, Thailand; Major in  Nanotechnology Engineering

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Shopee Thailand, Junior Category Manager (Supermarket category)

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of HEC Paris’ MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? One main reason I choose the HEC Paris MBA is the specialization program, specifically the specialization in “Strategy” that allows me to focus on learning the specific skillset for pursuing my career goals as a top strategy C-level executive. Unlike other programs that let you choose your own electives by yourself, the specialization in strategy program suggests the essential courses to build my skillset for my career path. Therefore, I believe that this part of the HEC MBA program will strongly facilitate me to achieve my career goals.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at HEC Paris? Consulting Practice Club is the most exciting for me because I believe that this club will empower me to build strong consulting and strategy management skills. This club allows me to gain intensive consulting experience by learning through real-world business cases and to have a strong consulting networking. So, I am very excited to participate in this club to drive my capability to pursue my goal.

HEC Paris is just 17 kilometers from Paris. What do you see as the best part of earning your MBA so close to Paris? There are two best parts for me. The first part is a professional experience opportunity in Paris. Having an MBA close to Paris gives the opportunity to connect with top companies in Paris (e.g. McKinsey, AXA, L’Oréal, etc.) for many purposes, such as doing internships and practicing business cases. Therefore, this opportunity may enable me to pursue my career goal. The second part is a great living experience. Paris is one of the most amazing cities to visit and enjoy. With many beautiful iconic landmarks, friendly people and good food, I believe having my MBA and enjoying my life in Paris will fulfill my life journey.

Historically, over 90% of HEC Paris’ MBA students hail from outside France. Why is exposure to global diversity so critical to business success? Diversity from international experiences is very critical because solutions in the current business world need creativity and wide global experience and knowledge. Since businesses are moving very fast today, the ways we have to deal with any cases have to be changed to handle the cases effectively. For example, the way Shopee runs its online supermarket business is significantly different in each country based on local behavior and environment. We have tried to apply some commercial strategies that successfully work in Thailand to Indonesia, but the result totally failed. After that, we re-assessed the strategy and then adapted some key actions based on local buying behavior and combined new marketing features. Eventually, we can successfully run the strategy and get good results. This case reflects that if I have a broad global experience, I will be able to foresee the failure and prepare a better plan. Therefore, gaining knowledge and experience from diverse people on the global stage is important for business success.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: The biggest accomplishment in my career is that I led the team managing supermarket category at Shopee to grow 60% profits within a very short period and under pressure.

During the pandemic in 2021, the online grocery market grew by three times in two months, tempting new players, including Shopee, to enter the market. At that time, three established players had competitive advantages over us. I was initially part of a team to design a go-to-market strategy. However, the category manager suddenly resigned so I had to step up as a junior category manager to lead the team of 10 people.

During the limited two-week time, I had to push myself to learn about e-commerce through reading e-commerce research papers and getting guidance from senior colleagues. I also attended many online training sessions to improve my skills (e.g., team-working strategy, constructive feedback, and active listening).

After that, I could identify key issues and put together a solid plan. I scaled up the team from 10 to 20 people, acquired more assortments, and built partnerships with offline supermarkets. My team executed the plan successfully and managed to grow the supermarket category profit by 60% within 3 months, from €1.3 to 2 million. This challenge pushed me to learn and gave me confidence to be resilient in the future.

Looking ahead two years, what would make your MBA experience successful? From my professional development, I believe key values that help me achieve my MBA experience are “continuous improvement”, “openness”, and “discipline”. Continuous improvement urges me to keep pushing myself to reach my potential. Openness allows me to go out of my comfort zone and learn new perspectives. Discipline keeps me on track and commit to my goal. With these three values in mind, I will keep developing  myself to successfully grow and evolve during my MBA.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into HEC Paris’s MBA program? Apart from preparing for a competitive GMAT scope, I think a high potential and solid professional goal is very important. You have to set a clear goal, justify why the HEC MBA is a critical step and show that you have the capability to achieve the goal. Importantly, you also have to show what you can contribute to the HEC MBA and why the program needs you.

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